Great Doctor Ling Ran

Yun Hua City had already started bustling with activity early in the morning.

Sister Dong was also becoming more excited in the treatment room.

She muttered as she gazed at Ling Ran, who was guiding Miao Tansheng in performing intradermal suture, “Could it be that Guan Yu felt no pain when he was having poison scraped off his bones because of how good looking Hua Tuo is?” [1]

“I’m the one suturing your wounds right now.” Miao Tansheng chuckled.

Sister Dong naturally looked at Miao Tansheng when she heard what he said and immediately furrowed her eyebrows, “Can you not be such a party pooper?”

Miao Tansheng narrowed his puffy eyes in annoyance, and he almost jabbed the surgical needle into Sister Dong’s palm.

Sister Dong looked at Ling Ran again. “If only I found out earlier that there’s a Hua Tuo [2] in your clinic, I would have beaten my husband up every day so that his bones would be fractured. This way, he would need to seek treatment here too.”

“Have you ever considered the fact that there are other ways to injure yourself other than hitting your husband?” Ling Jiezhou could not take it anymore.

Sister Dong looked like she just had an epiphany. “What you just said made sense! But it’s not like I can hit my son, as he’s taking his high school entrance exam soon. As for our dog, it’s a German Shepherd, and I’m afraid that I’m no match for it…”

Miao Tansheng did not even feel like suturing Sister Dong’s wounds anymore after he heard that. It gave him no sense of accomplishment at all.

‘I’m trying my best to perform cosmetic suture on your wounds here, and my job is so freakin tiring. And you’re trying to get yourself injured by hitting other people?’

Miao Tansheng looked at Ling Jiezhou with the kind of expression a doctor working at a clinic wore when looking at the chief of the clinic. “Chief Ling, can’t a person come to the clinic without getting injured? It’s not like our clinic is a tiger’s lair.”

“What’s the point of coming to the clinic if you’re not injured?” Ling Jiezhou tried to sound intelligent as he said that. He then pouted and said, half to the patient and half to Miao Tansheng. “Suture the wounds well and take care of their aesthetics. There’s a reason why the cosmetic suture technique exists.”

“Got it.” What else could Miao Tansheng say? He then turned to look at the patient’s hand again, and after Ling Ran gave him some orders, he totally forgot about Ling Jiezhou’s existence.

All doctors wanted career advancement and to improve their skills. Hence, lifelong learning was unavoidable.

And based on what they saw from their seniors, all doctors knew that one could never be skilled enough and that there was always room for improvement.

The thing Miao Tansheng missed the most about working in the hospital was the opportunity to elevate his skills. After working outside for a few years, he was still making a living out of all the skills he learned in the hospital. Even though doctors working in clinics who were skilled in cosmetic suture were rare, he still…

Miao Tansheng instinctively wanted to better himself.

Ling Ran guided Miao Tansheng more meticulously and earnestly than he had expected.

Ling Ran had always been a meticulous and earnest person. Back when he was still a student, his male teachers and male classmates would always give him extra worksheets and examination papers, such as “College Entrance Examination Papers for the past Three Years and Mock Examination Papers for the past Five Years” [3], as well as Huang Gang Mi Juan, published books[4], as gifts. They would give him a lot of them, and Ling Ran would earnestly and meticulously complete all of them whenever he had time.

Even if Ling Ran had solved some of the problems before, he would often try to solve them using a different approach.

Ling Ran’s sincere attitude toward these gifts was exactly why Ling Ran could solve every single question that came up during his college entrance examination.

Ling Ran also adopted the same attitude when treating patients.

Even when he was operating with a surgical method he had used for ten or even a hundred times, he could still derive enjoyment out of it. And even though he had sutured all kinds of wounds before, every time he encountered a kind of wound that he had sutured before, Ling Ran would also stitch it up as earnestly and meticulously as the first time he did it.

Hence, Ling Ran was equally earnest and meticulous in guiding Miao Tansheng.

“I’m done,” Miao Tansheng said.

Ling Ran examined the stitches and said, “No problem. It’s well done.”

“Thank you, teacher.” After spending more time than usual on the stitches, Miao Tansheng felt a surge of excitement when he got Ling Ran’s recognition.

His suturing skills had improved since the last time Ling Ran saw him. And this was exactly why he had realized that Ling Ran was more excellent than what he originally thought. He had always found Ling Ran to be very skilled, but he had even more admiration for Ling Ran now.

“Teacher, you should come to the clinic more frequently in the future.” Miao Tansheng was overcome with excitement, and he now had no qualms in calling Ling Ran his teacher.

After witnessing Ling Ran’s excellence, he saw a ray of hope in his once bleak future again.

Ling Ran nodded and glanced at Miao Tansheng as he said, “The clinic is my home.”

“Yes, of course. You should come home more often.” Miao Tansheng had such a bright smile on his face that he looked like a pug and wolf mix, and his puffy eyes were so scrunched up that if there were fish swimming inside, they would have been crushed to death.

Sister Dong, whose hand had just been bandaged, turned to look at Miao Tansheng again. She said in annoyance, “Doctor Miao, can you please not speak in this kind of tone? You’re ruining the aesthetics of the atmosphere.”

After she finished speaking, she totally ignored Miao Tansheng. She did not look like she had the intention to head home either. She merely looked at Ling Ran with a grin and said, “I don’t even feel any pain even though the effects of the anesthetics are long gone if I stare at Doctor Ling.”

Miao Tansheng chuckled. “The effects of the anesthetics are still around.”

“It there’s any pain, it would be because you didn’t suture my wounds well.” Sister Dong looked up and said, “And if you didn’t suture them well, I’m not gonna pay.”

Even though Sister Dong was merely joking, Miao Tansheng sighed in resignation. “Sister Dong, you’re not being very reasonable.”

Sister Dong looked at Miao Tansheng with a smile. “Doctor Miao, if I were a reasonable person, would I have hit my husband to the point that he needed to be admitted into the hospital?”

Miao Tansheng looked at his regular client in a daze and only answered after a long while, “What you just said does make sense.”

“I know, right?”

“Yes.” Doctor Miao was acting extremely obediently as he gazed at Sister Dong’s palm. After all, Sister Dong was a person who could hit her husband to the point that he needed to be admitted into the hospital just because of some melon seeds. (He really did not buy this story.) If she hit a middle-aged doctor who was more than forty years old, she would have absolutely no problem in doing so.

On the other hand, Ling Jiezhou actually came up with a good idea. He walked over with a smile and said, “You can also bring your husband over when he’s injured. We are capable of suturing all kinds of superficial wounds.”

“His bones are fractured,” Sister Dong said. “He also has health insurance, and he can only make claims if he seeks treatment at the hospital. Besides, he’s just a brute, and there’s nothing wrong for him to have some scars on his face. There’s no point for him to pay so much money to receive a cosmetic suture.”

“Yeah, what you just said makes sense,” Ling Jiezhou answered against his will as he convinced himself internally that patience was what brought people wealth. He then went to issue a medical bill, and that put him in a good mood.

Miao Tansheng was also feeling happy.

Even though men were ambitious and vain, cosmetic suturing was quite a profitable trade. The surgical thread Miao Tansheng usually used ranged from a few hundred to 1,000 RMB, and he got to receive a commission of about 20%. Combined with his other miscellaneous income, he got paid more than when he was working in a government hospital.

Now that he got to learn from Ling Ran, Miao Tansheng felt even happier. He called Ling Ran “teacher” non-stop.

After sending Sister Dong, who was reluctant to leave, off, Miao Tansheng said with a great deal of emotions in his heart, “You know, it’s quite a good thing for surgeons to have some regular clients too.”

“What’s the good thing about it?” Ling Jiezhou was curious as he was not a doctor.

Miao Tansheng thought about it for a while and said, “There’s a sense of familiarity when you operate on regular clients. For example, even before I started suturing, I already know the texture of Sister Dong’s skin, and I also have an idea of how thick it is. I just need to make one or two stitches to be able to suture the rest of the wound without a hitch. It’s really convenient…”

Ling Jiezhou’s reaction: O_O

Translator’s notes:

“Scrape the Poison off the Bone” is one of the stories in “Romance of the Three Kingdoms”. When a doctor named Hua Tuo scraped the poison off Guan Yu’s bone, he felt no pain at all as he was drinking wine and playing chess.

Hua Tuo was a Chinese physician who lived during the late Eastern Han dynasty. The historical texts Records of the Three Kingdoms and Book of the Later Han record Hua Tuo as the first person in China to use anesthesia during surgery.

An exercise book published in China for students who are revising for college entrance examinations.

A publisher in China specializing in exercise books.